North Korea says war on the Korean Peninsula is imminent

Pyongyang considers a war on the Korean Peninsula inevitable, North Korean Defense Minister Kang Soon Nam said in an address to the participants of the 11th Moscow Conference on International Security.

“Nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is no longer a question of whether it will be, but a question of who will start it and when. The nuclear war mania by the United States and the puppets in the Republic of Korea is turning the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia into a new hotbed of nuclear war,” he said (cit. according to RIA Novosti).

On July 18, the Kyodo news agency, citing the Japanese Coast Guard, reported that North Korea launched two ballistic missiles. On July 12, the Japanese Ministry of Defense announced the launch of a DPRK ballistic missile that fell into the Sea of ​​Japan outside the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), about 250 km from Okushiri Island. According to the agency, it could be an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of more than 5,500 km. The Japanese Ministry of Defense clarified that this is the 14th launch of such weapons by the DPRK. The flight time of the rocket was then 74 minutes, which is a record.

July 10 at the Ministry of Defense of the DPRK reportedthat in the period from July 2 to July 9, reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force violated the airspace of the republic several times. The DPRK Ministry of Defense also recalled a recent statement by the US defense department, in which it announced an attempt to bring a strategic nuclear submarine into the operational zone on the Korean Peninsula. Their deployment on the peninsula will be the first deployment of strategic nuclear weapons since 1981. According to a representative of the DPRK Ministry of Defense, these actions create a “dangerous situation that further aggravates military tension in the region” and approaches “the tipping point of a nuclear conflict due to provocative military actions USA”.